particularly if she could allege misconduct with another woman, which he would not deny.  At the same time, he hoped to keep Aileen’s name out of it.  Mrs. Cowperwood, if she would, could give any false name if he made no contest.  Besides, she was not a very strong person, intellectually speaking.  He could bend her to his will.  There was no need of saying much more now; the ice had been broken, the situation had been put before her, and time should do the rest.

“Don’t be dramatic, Lillian,” he commented, indifferently.  “I’m not such a loss to you if you have enough to live on.  I don’t think I want to live in Philadelphia if ever I come out of here.  My idea now is to go west, and I think I want to go alone.  I sha’n’t get married right away again even if you do give me a divorce.  I don’t care to take anybody along.  It would be better for the children if you would stay here and divorce me.  The public would think better of them and you.”

“I’ll not do it,” declared Mrs. Cowperwood, emphatically.  “I’ll never do it, never; so there!  You can say what you choose.  You owe it to me to stick by me and the children after all I’ve done for you, and I’ll not do it.  You needn’t ask me any more; I’ll not do it.”

“Very well,” replied Cowperwood, quietly, getting up.  “We needn’t talk about it any more now.  Your time is nearly up, anyhow.” (Twenty minutes was supposed to be the regular allotment for visitors.) “Perhaps you’ll change your mind sometime.”

She gathered up her muff and the shawl-strap in which she had carried her gifts, and turned to go.  It had been her custom to kiss Cowperwood in a make-believe way up to this time, but now she was too angry to make this pretense.  And yet she was sorry, too—­sorry for herself and, she thought, for him.

“Frank,” she declared, dramatically, at the last moment, “I never saw such a man as you.  I don’t believe you have any heart.  You’re not worthy of a good wife.  You’re worthy of just such a woman as you’re getting.  The idea!” Suddenly tears came to her eyes, and she flounced scornfully and yet sorrowfully out.

Cowperwood stood there.  At least there would be no more useless kissing between them, he congratulated himself.  It was hard in a way, but purely from an emotional point of view.  He was not doing her any essential injustice, he reasoned—­not an economic one—­which was the important thing.  She was angry to-day, but she would get over it, and in time might come to see his point of view.  Who could tell?  At any rate he had made it plain to her what he intended to do and that was something as he saw it.  He reminded one of nothing so much, as he stood there, as of a young chicken picking its way out of the shell of an old estate.  Although he was in a cell of a penitentiary, with nearly four years more to serve, yet obviously he felt, within himself, that the whole world was still before him.  He could go west if he could not reestablish himself in Philadelphia; but he must stay here long enough to win the approval of those who had known him formerly—­to obtain, as it were, a letter of credit which he could carry to other parts.